President Wants Congress to Give Each Senior Citizen
$250 to Offset No Social Security COLA
Obama wants additional $250 Economic Recovery Payment
paid to seniors, veterans and people with disabilities
Oct.
15, 2009 - President Obama yesterday announced his support for an
additional $250 Economic Recovery Payment to the seniors, veterans and
people with disabilities who are struggling to make ends meet with
retirement savings that have not fully recovered from their losses over
the first year of the recession.
"Even as we seek to bring about recovery, we must
act on behalf of those hardest hit by this recession. That is why I am
announcing my support for an additional $250 in emergency recovery
assistance to seniors, veterans, and people with disabilities to help
them make it through these difficult times, said President Obama.
These payments will provide aid to more than 50
million people in the coming year, relief that will not only make a
difference for them, but for our economy as a whole, complementing the
tax cuts weve provided working families and small businesses through
the Recovery Act.
"This additional assistance will be especially
important in the coming months, as countless seniors and others have
seen their retirement accounts and home values decline as a result of
this economic crisis. I want to compliment all the members of Congress
who have been working to address these challenges, especially Senators
Reid, Baucus, Sanders, and Lincoln, Speaker Pelosi, and Representatives
Rangel, McCarthy, and DeFazio."
SSA calls for passage of $250 payment to each
senior citizen as recommended by President Obama
Oct. 15, 2009 Social Security made it official
this morning. Over 57 million Americans will not see an automatic
Cost-of-Living Adjustment (COLA) added to their Social Security payments
for 2010. More than 36 million of these are senior citizens. The COLA is
automatically determined each year to cover inflation, but, since the
economic crash back in 2008 inflation has gone flat in the struggling
economy.
Read more...
Fact Sheet from White House
The Presidents proposal would provide an
additional year of the $250 "Economic Recovery Payments" initially
enacted under the American Reinvestment & Recovery Act (ARRA). Under
this proposal:
● 57 million people would benefit. These
include 49 million Social Security beneficiaries, 5 million Supplemental
Security Income beneficiaries, 2 million veterans benefit recipients,
0.5 million railroad retirement and disability beneficiaries, and also
about 1 million public-employee retirees not entitled to any of the
previous benefits.
● The benefit would be $250 or equivalent to
a 2 percent increase in benefits for the average Social Security retiree
beneficiary. Under the rules no person could "double dip" and receive a
$250 Economic Recovery Payment through more than one program. Nor could
they receive both an Economic Recovery Payment and the Making Work Pay
tax credit.
● The total cost of the proposal would be $13
billion and would not hurt the solvency of Social Security. The
President is committed to ensuring that the $13 billion cost of the
proposal does not reduce the solvency of Social Security or other social
insurance programs.
● Would extend an effective relief program. To
date Economic Recovery Payments have been made to 55 million people
including seniors, veterans and people with disabilities and totaled
$13.7 billion. Most of the checks were mailed out in May 2009.
In addition to this legislative proposal, the
Internal Revenue Service and the Department of Treasury will take steps
this week to prevent reductions in the amounts that workers can
contribute to IRAs, 401(k)s, and other aspects of tax-favored retirement
systems in 2010 that some feared could result from negative inflation
over the past twelve months.
President Obama to
Nominate Former Bush Official as Trustee for Social Security Trust Fund
Oct. 15, 2009 - President Obama yesterday announced
his intent to nominate Charles Blahous, former Bush official, as a
Member of The Board of Trustees of the Social Security Trust Funds.
Chuck Blahous is a Senior Fellow at the Hudson
Institute, specializing in domestic economic policy.
Prior to joining the Hudson Institute, Blahous
served as Deputy Director of President Bush's National Economic Council.
From 2001-2007,
Blahous served as a Special Assistant to the
President for Economic Policy, first covering retirement security issues
and later also encompassing energy policy.
In 2001, Blahous served as the Executive Director
of the bipartisan President's Commission to Strengthen Social Security,
co-chaired by Dick Parsons and the late U.S. Senator Daniel P. Moynihan
(D-NY), which submitted a unanimous report to President Bush in
December, 2001.
From 2000-01, Blahous led the Alliance for Worker
Retirement Security. From 1996-2000, he served as Policy Director for
U.S. Senator Judd Gregg (R-NH), staffing the Senator's co-chairmanship
of the National Commission on Retirement Policy, as well as the
Senator's initiatives in retirement and health care reform. From
1989-96,
Blahous served in the office of Senator Alan
Simpson (R-WY), first as a Congressional Science Fellow sponsored by the
American Physical Society, and in 1994-96 as the Senator's Legislative
Director. There, Blahous staffed the Senator on the bipartisan
Commission on Entitlement and Tax Reform. Blahous has a Ph.D. in
computational quantum chemistry from the University of
California/Berkeley, and an A.B. from Princeton University, where he won
the McKay Prize in Physical Chemistry.
Keep up with the latest news for senior citizens, baby
boomers
Oct.
15, 2009 - President Obama yesterday announced his support for an
additional $250 Economic Recovery Payment to the seniors, veterans and
people with disabilities who are struggling to make ends meet with
retirement savings that have not fully recovered from their losses over
the first year of the recession.
Action stops insurance increase for about 27% of
senior citizens, others protected already; Seniors wont see COLA for
2010
